JUST IN: 8 escaped Islamist prisoners shot dead in India, say Police

NEW DELHI (AFP) – Eight suspected Islamists were shot dead by police Monday (Oct 31) after they escaped from a high security jail in India by slitting the throat of a prison guard, an official said. The members of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) had staged an overnight breakout from the prison in Bhopal by attacking a warder in their cell with sharpened prison-issue steel plates. They then managed to scale several walls inside the prison by tying together bedsheets. Police said they had been later cornered on the outskirts of the city in the central state of Madhya Pradesh but resisted efforts to take them back into custody. “We asked them to surrender but they tried to break the police cordon,” Yogesh Choudhary, Bhopal’s inspector general of police, told AFP. “They were unarmed but attempted to attack the police with stones. We had to shoot them,” Cho...